Marketing tips, observations & philosophy, plus a few rants and random musings - from those who practice, preach and teach marketing, research, advertising, public relations and business strategy.

Friday, November 18, 2005

Fed Up

We've all been there. Crunch time on a project. Every second counts. It's down to the wire. You have to overnight it to make deadline. You've made the drop off at Kinko's. You can exhale.

WRONG! Your package got lost. The "World on Time" folks at FedEX lost your package. The near error free system failed you at your most vulnerable time. What can you do? You still look bad even though technically it's not your fault. You basically have zero recourse against the courier;if your lucky you'll get your money back assuming the package eventually shows up and reaches its destination three days too late.

I've seen this happen at least ten times in recent years. This week, on two consecutive days, two packages got lost that were sent from the same drop box to the same location. One package never entered the system at all. Most likely the pickup guy dropped it on the street while walking to his truck. The other got missorted in Memphis and ended up in PA instead of VA. This has got to be a first for them. What are the odds of this happening twice? Slim I'm sure. But it did. At a critical time for a critical project. I'm still playing damage control to get the project done on time.

There are also scores of examples of West Virginia zip codes that the overnights can't locate in one day.

My point. Rely on these folks as little as possible. It is a matter of time before you get burnt.

1 Comments:

Not that this is any consolation, Michael, but this happened to me this week as well. I shipped a VERY important package via overnight/express USPS mail. The package got "lost", but only for a few hours. It was delivered at 3:30 PM, even though it was guaranteed to be delivered by noon. I am still working with the post office to get a refund.

This is the second time in a few months that this has happened with USPS. So, I guess with USPS and FEDEX not "on top of their game", what's left??? UPS??? I have heard that they play "football" with the packages from time to time, so I guess as long as it is not breakable, UPS will be fine.